26 October 2012

Ceci n'est pas un mariage

The second project that begins today is one that I have been developing for a couple of years now, but have only recently been able to conceptualize how social media might be its vehicle. There are four stages to the project.

1. Using Craigslist I will post an ad seeking a male marital partner. I will direct all my various social media connections to the ad to draw attention, but hope that replies come in from those I don't virtually know, as well. The responses, if any, will be redirected through this blog, and perhaps Facebook, which holds the largest possible audience. There had better be responses. I mean, I'm a goddamned catch.

2. Sometime in the Spring semester, I will pare the responses down to a couple of serious candidates (remember, I'm a catch) with whom I will conduct videotaped (videoSDcarded?) interviews. The interviews will be posted to YouTube. From this group, I will choose my future husband, the father of my future children.

3. During the summer of 2013, he and I will fly into Seattle, rent a car, and drive to Vancouver, BC for the wedding (ceci est un mariage) and then on to enjoy a honeymoon in Alaska (ceci n'est pas un mariage). Honeymoon photos will be posted to Tumblr. We will drive back through BC to Washington (ceci est un mariage parce que vous l'avez fait ailleurs) afterwards, and, rather than flying home, take the rental car back to Cincinnati via a circuitous route: all 48 contiguous states. Photos will be taken all along the route, each captioned with one of the above parenthetical phrases, depending on if, at that particular spot, same-sex marriage is legally recognized.

4. Upon arriving back in Cincinnati, I, my now unhusband (determined spatially), craigslist responses, video interviews, and the photographs will be available for viewing in a gallery for about a month, until it's time to return to work for the fall semester. Ideally, there would be live video feed streaming from the gallery space. The exhibition will be titled Ceci n'est pas un mariage.

What happens from there is up to my unhusband and I. Perhaps we will someday travel again to a place where we can say, "Ceci est un mariage."

I'm hoping to crowd-fund this project through Kickstarter, embedding it even further in the social media sphere from which the project will be distributed. If anyone is interested in helping through some other means, I'm happy to have you on-board as wedding planning crew.